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Leader’s candidate’s message on accessibility resonates strongly with young people, even liberals and NDP young people
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April 29, 2022 • 2 hours ago • 3 minutes reading • 134 comments Hope from the Conservative Party leadership, Pierre Poalievre, pictured this week before a performance at the Centennial Youth Arena in Brockville. Photo: RONALD ZAJAC / The Recorder and Times
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As Pierre Poalier’s star continues to rise in the Conservative leadership race, nonconservative circles in Canada say the only way to stem the 42-year-old’s momentum may be to heed his “resonant” messages about accessibility.
“Without the electoral imagination to understand why people would vote for Poilievre, it will be difficult for liberals to convince people why they shouldn’t,” veteran liberal strategist Andrew Tumilti wrote in a recent column for the Toronto Star. “Putting the rhetoric aside, Poalievre is talking about housing, affordability, inflation and freedom,” Tumilti added.
A study by Abacus after Poilievre launched his campaign found that his overall message about accessibility resonated strongly with both NDP and Liberal voters, especially young people. In particular, 51% of respondents aged 18 to 29 said they would consider voting for a Conservative Party led by Poaliver.
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A recent poll of conservative students in British Columbia similarly found that Poilievre is the clear favorite for the under-40 team. Among young conservatives at the four largest universities in British Columbia, 77.6% supported Poalievre.
OFFICIAL: Results of our BC student vote on conservative leadership. Students at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Simon Fraser University (SFU) and the University of Victoria (UVic). It’s great to see such enthusiasm from our young conservatives on campus! pic.twitter.com/054r3nH2qI
– Connor Hollingshead (@ connorh2001) April 19, 2022
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Earlier this month, Poilievre garnered widespread attention with a viral video condemning rising Vancouver property prices and blaming “gatekeepers” as civilian governments blocking development and rising construction costs. TVO columnist John Michael McGrath, for example, responded to the video by saying that progressives could either work out “a necessary alternative message of their own” or prepare for “Prime Minister Poilievre.”
This is probably why Poilievre has doubled the message in recent weeks. His campaign subsequently circulated proposals to suspend federal funding for municipalities that “block the construction of housing.”
With so much land and few people, owning a home in Canada should be achievable, but instead it is getting farther and farther away.
As prime minister, I warn porters in big cities: if they want all their federal funding, they have to build homes.
Join, vote: pic.twitter.com/hiDFuLWv83
– Pierre Poilievre (@PierrePoilievre) April 25, 2022
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Colin Horgan, who has worked on liberal campaigns, wrote in a Medium publication that Poilievre’s “populist thesis” about affordability seems to work and even compared it to Justin Trudeau’s 2015 report on the rise of the “middle class.” “Accessibility is the new middle class. And he speaks of Pierre Poalievre in a way that makes people want to listen. Be careful, ”Horgan wrote.
Poilievre’s housing proposals have even won praise from liberal circles in the United States. In a recent column in the Washington Post, center-left writer Matthew Iglesias said anti-NIMBY sentiment by Poilievre and others should be a model for Republicans in the United States. “If federal action to discourage municipal over-regulation is good enough for the Canadian right, it must be good enough for the American right,” he wrote.
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Poilievre has led every poll of conservative candidates for leadership since the start of the race and has garnered an extremely disproportionate share of official approvals.
Call all sexually active gay men: Canadian Blood Services needs YOU. For the first time since the AIDS crisis, “men who have sex with men” are now allowed to donate blood and plasma without the necessary period of celibacy. While gays remain the Canadian demographic that is most disproportionately infected with HIV, the agency will now check for risky sexual behavior, not sexual orientation. Photo by The Canadian Press / Ryan Remiorz
According to an Ipsos poll last week, 37% of conservative voters expected Poliever to take the crown from their party. Only 14 percent predicted victory for Poalievre’s closest rival, former Quebec Prime Minister Jean Charest.
All this is happening as the Conservative Party itself sees growing popularity. A survey by Nanos Research last week found that the Conservative Party enjoyed 35.6% support against 30% for the Liberals. This is not only one of the highest results for the Tories since the beginning of COVID-19, but it is more than enough to win their government if the numbers stick to the general election.
Even Gerald Butts, a highly pro-liberal former adviser to Prime Minister Trudeau, received some skewed praise for the Conservative leader in a tweet on Thursday.
His crypto stuff is crazy about banana muffins, but Poilievre’s French is fantastic.
Guess which of these two things is more important in general elections.
– Gerald Butts (@gmbutts) April 28, 2022
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Butts rejected Poilievre’s proposals for cryptocurrency as “crazy about banana muffins”, but praised his perfect French (Poilievre was raised in a French-Alberta household). “Guess which of these two things is more important in a general election,” Butts wrote.
The Ontario College of Family Physicians has launched a new advertising campaign to force the Ontario government to address the chronic shortage of family physicians in the province. Or, as the ad says, “your family doctor who doesn’t have a single doctor to help you grow up.” Photo from Ontario College of Family Physicians
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